


Lives Before

by sister_coyote



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-04
Updated: 2007-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Argilla grows up in the shadow of the woman who she was and yet was not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lives Before

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of the game.

Argilla grows up in the shadow of the woman who she was and yet was not, whose name she shares, in dreams of blood and bone and torn flesh. This does not make her childhood unhappy—indeed she is the happier for it, though she does not think anyone who is not—was not—one of them could possibly understand that. It is something she shares with the rest of them, the knowledge that she killed and died for them, once-in-a-dream, and they for her, all of them: and yet here they are together again. It is worth a little blood in her dreams.

(Indeed she is nearly twelve before she realizes that not everyone in the world has these dreams, not everyone in the world has their own . . . comrades from lives-before. It is so natural for them that it has not occurred to her it might be otherwise for everyone else. It makes her feel both strange and special.)

Still, for all that, it is a shock when she discovers, at age nineteen, that there are yet memories she has not dreamed. She looks up one day at her bus stop, on the way to her classes at university, and there is a a woman with dark hair cut slantwise and long sad eyes, and for a moment Argilla cannot breathe or think or move. The woman moves on, fierce, beautiful, her boots heavy on the steps of the bus.

It seems like fate when the woman turns up in her calculus class, sharp and clever and yet always a little distant. Her name is Jinana. Jinana. Argilla knows she knows that name.

She does not realize that she's been staring until Jinana looks up, hazy eyes, and says, "Yes?"

She knows she should apologize—or at very least introduce herself like a normal person—but instead she says, "The last time I saw you, I was crying. I think. I don't remember very well."

For a moment Jinana's face sharpens more, and she seems to bristle—there is something punk about her, for all the faint romantic air of melancholy that Argilla sees around her (or perhaps is just imagining)—and then she says, "Argilla."

Argilla wets her lips. "Yes," she says, "you remember— I knew—I—I'm sorry—"

"Don't," Jinana says, "don't apologize. I thought they were just dreams." No, Argilla is not imagining that melancholy.

Of course, if she had not had others around, to share the memories with . . . "We avenged you," she says, in a whisper.

"Don't tell me about revenge," Jinana says. "Ask me out for coffee. Perhaps I'll say yes." She smiles; for a moment the melancholy lifts, and she is inexpressibly beautiful, and Argilla sees green in her dark hair.

"I never thought I'd see you again." Her heart might burst.

"Coffee," Jinana says, "at the Daily Grind, at three," and touches Argilla's wrist, and then is gone, bag over her shoulder, hair swinging, into the world.


End file.
